Kent Beck recently posted a letter of recommendation from his future boss for the job that he hopes to get. Written from a perspective of 3 years into the future, it is a great exercise in bringing clarity to how he wants to be recognized by his employer for adding value. I want to replicate…
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Resume and Interview Preparation Tips
OK so I’ve been a manager off and on in information technology (especially software delivery) since 1990. I have hired a few employees, and more contract staff than I care to remember. I want to share some tips for getting your resume read and forwarded that work for me – they will get you a…
Masterly Management
Don Gray wrote this post about management style entitled Managing in Mayberry. I thought that it was insightful. When I thought about the example he used, though, it was about a stable state system. It was managing to the status quo. Manager as remover of difficulty. Where is manager as practice improver? Certainly the masterly…
One Size Fits All (Not!)
Often I have railed against the stupidity of management, when designing one size fits all “round hole” policies. It is the single most abused policy anti-pattern in my experience. Policy Structure: For the purpose of this discussion, any policy can be divided into three components: Benefits (why I need a policy at all) Means…
Human OS, Stupid and Lazy, Leadership, Story Scope
Upgrade to the Human Operating System – BusinessWeek I read this article, and it seemed to me to say for organizations in general, what Agile has done for software development teams. Moving from a command and control – process/factory model, to a model that allows/incents/expects humans to invent, analyze, innovate, figure out. Is it possible that…
Local Optimization
I am clearly aggravated. I have been for a while, and I finally understand why. In the world of systems thinking, it is called Local Optimization. That is where, in a multivariable system I optimise for one variable at the expense of other variables, and subsequently reduce the overall output of the system. In more…
Planning Bug Fixes
Jason Yip posted recently about scheduling bug fixes. I liked what he had to say. He is a very thoughtful person. I wanted to extend his thoughts with my own… 1) Fixing bugs is unpredictable – you never know how many you will have or how long they will take to fix. Defects in delivered…
[Curation #3] Competency, Principles, Hiring, PM101
Want to be strategic? Be competent first | Adventures in IT – InfoWorld Provocative post about walking before you run. If you can’t execute, your strategy will not help. Agile Complexification Inverter: What are the Principles? I like this way of thinking – principles first, because it helps us stay out of “methodology” land. Too often, we…
Culture of Duz
A while back, Ester Derby posted in reaction to an email advert for a leadership workshop – about how to counter the “culture of entitlement”. She reacted somewhat violently to “leaders are constantly frustrated” by this. She implied or stated that the leaders who are frustrated are somehow responsible for the culture. So I have…
Curation Collection #2
http://pmboos.posterous.com/how-to-initiate-agile-adoption-within-a-large “Q: What change models work? Q: How ot be agents of change? (as coaches)” This was an insightful list of questions related to enterprise agile adoption. I like questions because they are less likely than answers to lead to one-size-fits-all-suits-none solutions. http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html I like the cult of done. I like the manifesto – I…